


Will They or Won't They?

by kingairwick



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingairwick/pseuds/kingairwick





	Will They or Won't They?

Mohinder Suresh felt stupid. Not oblivious, not negligent, just stupid. He didn’t know what had brought on this sudden wave of self-awareness, or why he suddenly wanted to sit down and read twenty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica just to “catch up”.

It probably had some connection to Sylar. Ever since he saw Sylar in his apartment _again_ , and felt that rush of adrenaline when he thinks Sylar’s about to do something sinister _again_ , and got let down when he realized there was no way of winning, but felt utter relief that Sylar had not taken advantage of one of the million chances to kill him… _again_ , Mohinder felt as though maybe something was going on in that deranged little mind of his that felt something for the Indian ex-taxi cab driver. And that’s when Mohinder realized he was stupid.

In the following days after his revelation, while Maya took to laying in Molly’s bed all day and moaning for her brother, and Matt stormed angrily around accusing everyone and everything for letting an escaped serial killer into the house (at one point he even decided it appropriate to blame the desk chair for not breaking, and thus hurting the maniac’s legs), Mohinder took to researching.

He was familiar with this process. It felt like home. If home smelled like old books that hadn’t been opened for at least a millennia. Which, according to the last time Mohinder had visited India, it did. The subject Mohinder was researching was the thing most foreign to him. Namely: humans. Not the Human Genome Project (he knew more about that project than he knew about his own bodily odors), not the human anatomy nor genetics, but psychology. And for this, he needed some outside expertise.

“So, what do you want to know?” Peter Petrelli asked, perusing through the many books Mohinder had strewn out on the table in front of him. They were in the Peter’s apartment, which the guy had miraculously got back after a five month absence. Mohinder suspected that bribery or “favors” were involved.

“How can you tell if someone likes you?”

“Likes you?”

“Yeah, you know, _like_ likes you.”

“I know what you mean, but…I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just this gel that you get whenever you’re around someone. Like you have some secret understanding or something…why, do you like someone?”

“…No.”

“Aw, c’mon…Hey! I bet it’s Matt. It _has_ to be Matt, he’s definitely the type.”

“What do you mean, ‘the type’?”

“Um...nothing. But it is Matt, right?”

“No, it’s not Matt.”

“Then who is it?” Peter leaned forward to look Mohinder directly in the eye. This is exactly why Mohinder went to him for communication skills.

“I’m…not at liberty to say.”

“Uh-huh. Keeping it under wraps, all right….So, is that all you wanted to know?”

“Well, no.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know! Just… _something_. How can you tell if someone likes you? How do you know if they don’t do anything about it? Should _you_ do something about it? Why is it that people can never say anything directly to each other? It’s just all in the eyes, but what if you look in that person's eyes, and you can barely see ANYTHING? It’s just a dark, contorted, twisted cloud of murder and deceit and lies and betrayal and just a complete distrust of human kind and kindness to the point where that person has gone _completely INSANE_?!?!?!”

“Aw, dude, you’re macking on _SYLAR_! That’s terrific!”

“TERRIFIC? I’m going out of my MIND trying to convince myself that I’m not just as insane as he is!”

“Well…that’s love?”

“It’s _not_ love.”

“Sounds to me like it's love.”

“What do you know about love?”

“Hey, you came to me.”

“If I wanted to hear about daisies and rainbows and singing yourself to sleep then I would have come to…well, you. Which I did….Oh lord, I _am_ insane.”

“You’re kind of going on a rant here.”

“It’s not a rant, it’s a monologue.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

Peter leafed through a couple more pages of You and Your Psyche Can Raise a Wonderful Baby Called Having a Social Life and then put it down to stare directly at Mohinder again. Mohinder found himself wishing that Peter still had his bangs to partially block the sheer intensity of his gazes.

“Do you know what you need, Mohinder?”

“A psychiatrist?”

“Close. A drink.”

 

Mohinder had never been drunk before, but _damn_ did it feel good. Suddenly he found himself sitting on a park bench with Peter’s head in his lap, and laughing about that one time when Peter blew himself up and endangered .07 percent of the population.

“You know what, Momo?”

“What, P-squared?”

“This is nice. Just forgetting. It’s hard to be in love and not forget.”

“Talking about it isn’t forgetting about it.”

“Pssh, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah…no, wait, I don’t.”

“I mean, just not being at home and remembering all the good times and crying yourself to sleep while watching _Serendipity_ feels good.”

“You watch _Serendipity_?”

“Cusack’s a genius actor, man.”

“Yeah…”

“Like, just being out here commis—comm—sympathizing with you is a lot more fun.”

“Uh-huh.”

They both lay there for a while, trying to ignore the sub-zero temperature.

“Peter?”

“Yuh-huh?”

“Does this mean you’re in love with someone too?”

“I’m in love with many someone’s.”

“Oh.”

More silence.

“But you’re not together with any of them.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“Well, in two cases it’s highly illegal, and another two of mine are smitten with each other, the fifth one is stuck in an alternate future that I can never return to and the sixth one just sort of…disappeared on me.”

“That must suck.”

“It does.”

“So, you really can’t give that much advice to me, can you?”

“I guess not.”

 

The next morning, when Mohinder woke up to realize that Peter had made a minimum of seven passes at him the previous night, he rushed to the bathroom almost three consecutive times. The third time he only made it to the carpet which Matt bought from PB Teen when Molly moved in and which had the insufferable nerve to not slip under Sylar’s foot.

He passed the morning in a funk. When Matt left for work, Mohinder didn’t even have the energy to make him lunch. He just slipped him a ten dollar bill and hoped it would suffice. Around noontime, when it was time to pick Molly up for school, Mohinder just called Matt and asked that he pick the kid up.

Despite not having to leave the apartment anymore, Mohinder went outside anyway. He just let his feet lead, and his feet started leading fast. The air was really crisp, which meant that his eyes soon started to water. He felt around his coat for a tissue, and then realized that he never carried around tissues because he wasn’t a six-year-old girl. He wiped his eyes off on his sleeve and looked around.

He was in the park again, but a different section from where he and Peter had been the night before. Now there was a huge open structure in front of him. The old milk station if he wasn’t mistaken, and he almost never was. The coloring was old-fashioned and elegant, and it was a nice, quiet place, so he figured that he might bring Molly here sometime in the future.

“Nice place to play around in, huh?”

Mohinder whipped around to see Sylar leaning on a nearby pillar, pouring out M&M’s into his hand and eating them by the dozen. The killer grinned lazily at the professor and continued to act as though this were merely a lucky accident: serendipity.

“It’s a surprise to see you here, Doctor.”

“I…wasn’t planning on being here myself.”

“So it was… _fate_ that brought you to me?”

“You once said that you believed in fate and karma…”

“No, Doctor, I wasn’t lying.”

“And not just because I’m Indian…”

“Yeah.”

Another silence. The third in two days that Mohinder felt oddly comfortable with. Maybe his social skills _were_ improving.

“Listen…about the whole killing thing...”

“I’m not going to stop.”

“I know, but…”

“No buts. This is who I am. If I stop killing people, then I lose my purpose in life.”

“Do they all have to be so…innocent?”

“Those are the best kind.”

A fourth silence fell over them.

“Sylar?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like me?”

“…Yeah.”  



End file.
